Google stops Hong Kong auto-redirect as China plays hardball

Under threats that the Chinese government won't renew its Internet Content …

Google has decided to call off its efforts to redirect all China users to its Hong Kong search site, sort of. Instead of automatically sending searchers straight on to google.com.hk, the search giant once again serves up a Google China home page—complete with a faux search box image that sends users to the Hong Kong site when they click in it.

The change may seem minimal, but Google hopes it will be enough to appease the Chinese government—and to keep its license to operate an Internet business in the country.

Google says it decided to make the change because Chinese officials found the redirect "unacceptable." (Insert expression of shock here.) They told Google that something had to change or China would not renew Google's Internet Content Provider license on June 30—without it, Google won't be able to operate Google's China page at all.

If that happened, Google.cn would simply go dark and not provide searches or redirects to the Hong Kong page. Users who do not go directly to google.com.hk would be left confused, with no guidance about where to go.

Google's new China landing page. The search box is an image.

"That’s a prospect dreaded by many of our Chinese users, who have been vocal about their desire to keep Google.cn alive," wrote Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond.

As a result, the company decided to simply keep a "small percentage" of users going to a Google China landing page that then goes to the Hong Kong page with its uncensored search results. The landing page itself will not provide any search results.

"This approach ensures we stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on Google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page," said the company.

Google thinks this might be enough to appease the government and get them to renew Google's ICP license. We'll see. Now the Hong Kong site is only one click away instead of zero, and the China site still isn't functional on its own. Google is trying to have its cake and eat it, too; the Chinese government, while sometimes deluded, is not stupid.

Google says it has resubmitted its ICP license renewal application, so we'll find out soon enough whether China is willing to accept this workaround.

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui